A new Firefox add-on dubbed Firesheep lets "pretty much anyone" scan a Wi-Fi network and hijack others' access to Facebook, Twitter and a host of other services, a security researcher warned today.

A new Firefox add-on lets "pretty much anyone" scan a Wi-Fi network and hijack others' access to Facebook, Twitter and a host of other services, a security researcher warned today.

The add-on, dubbed "Firesheep," was released Sunday by Eric Butler, a Seattle-based freelance web application developer, at the ToorCon security conference, which ran Oct 22-24 in San Diego, Calif.

Butler said he created Firesheep to show the danger of accessing unencrypted Web sites from public Wi-Fi spots.

Although it's common for sites to encrypt user log-ons with HTTPS or SSL, few encrypt the actual traffic. "This leaves the cookie, and the user, vulnerable," said Butler in a post to his personal blog . "On an open wireless network, cookies are basically shouted through the air, making these attacks extremely easy."

With a user's cookie in hand, a criminal can do anything the user can do on a site, Butler noted. Among the sites that Firesheep can hijack are Facebook , Twitter , Flickr, bit.ly, Google and Amazon.

Butler did not reply to an interview request Monday.

"None of this is new, the flaw certainly isn't," said Richard Wang, the U.S. manager of SophosLabs, the research arm of UK-based security company Sophos. "But Firesheep makes it so easy to discover [unencrypted traffic and cookies] that pretty much anyone can use it to listen to what others are doing at public hotspots."

Firesheep adds a sidebar to Mozilla's Firefox browser that shows when anyone on an open network -- such as a coffee shop's Wi-Fi network -- visits an insecure site. "Double-click on someone [in the sidebar] and you're instantly logged on as them," said Butler in his short description of his add-on.

The add-on appears to be irresistible: Since Butler posted Firesheep on Sunday it's been downloaded nearly 50,000 times.

Butler created Firesheep to illustrate the wide-ranging problem of unencrypted sites and public networks. "Web sites have a responsibility to protect the people who depend on their services," he said. "They've been ignoring this responsibility for too long, and it's time for everyone to demand a more secure Web. My hope is that Firesheep will help the users win."

Wang was hopeful that the add-on would prompt more sites to encrypt their sessions. "The hope here is of increased use of HTTPS," he said. But he also urged more public network to secure users, although he acknowledged the logistics, handing out passwords necessary to connect, would be daunting. "It's the old 'security-versus-convenience' argument," he noted.

Users can protect themselves, said Wang, by refusing to access insecure sites while at open networks, or for the technically inclined, by relying on a secure proxy server, perhaps one run on their work machine, which their laptops would in turn access.

"But that's not a solution for the average user," Wang admitted.

Firesheep, which works with the Windows and Mac OS X versions of Firefox, can be downloaded free-of-charge from the GitHub site.